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> And that's not to say "good" is a fixed target... The interesting thing is that once you get to a certain point, you can see the infinite world that you haven

by brmgb 6y ago

> And that's not to say "good" is a fixed target... The interesting thing is that once you get to a certain point, you can see the infinite world that you haven't explored yet. > If you like math then there is a ton of stuff in programming that's mathematical, but you can't get a job in those areas until you've mastered the basics. I don't think you understand my point. While I don't think I am exceptionally good, I am not a twenty two years old junior. I have a MSc in Computer Science from a (very) good university and an actual engineering degree. I can debug. I was developing real time simulators of complex networked equipments in a safety critical environment. I (thankfully) wasn't doing CRUD business software. Let me illustrate my point with a story. I once spent three days trying to understand what wasn't working in some random network code in Ada using gdb and tcpdump because I wasn't allowed to install wireshark on these machines. In the end I realized there was a massive bug the version of the GNAT standard library we were using. Sockets were always bound to all addresses rather than the specified ip. I then had to write a work around because we absolutely couldn't update. And you know how I felt after that? Not clever. I felt sad, bored and like if I had forever lost a week of my life (which I had actually). Thankfully the project became bigger not long after and from then on I was able to spend more time managing the team and the project and didn't have to code much anymore. Gosh I hate coding. My points regarding maths is not that you can't do mathematically oriented programing. It is that there is far more interesting problem in pure maths that have nothing to do with computers. Nowadays, I work in management consulting on problems I actually find interesting and which thankfully involve more people than machines. I was just sharing to give some perspective to the article. Some people actually deeply dislike programming.

chubot 6y ago
OK, well it's great you found something you like, and I don't doubt that there are people who can program who don't like it. I would still claim that just like guitar, it may get more fun with practice, and that practice may take years. Even if you're working on some old legacy system, being the person who can make it sing is pretty fun IMO. Actually I find the legacy stuff to be more interesting because it actually runs and does things in the world. BTW I also found that those kind of debugging sessions went down drastically in frequency in a ~14 year career of programming. (We had multi-week, multi-engineer bugs at my first job in games.) The industry changed its practices significantly, and I also changed my personal practices. It only takes a few experiences like that to reflect on what could have gone differently. Sometimes they are out of your control, but often not. --- edit: If this helps make the point more succinctly, I will also say I was mathematically oriented, and had a masters and BS in engineering from a good university. And I worked on a small team shipping major console games ... and despite that, I got drastically better at debugging and testing in the next 10+ years. (Debugging being the most literally scientific part of programming; I was better at math than science.) Actually the experience of working with game programmers taught me how bad I was at debugging. There's also a lot to learn about software architecture for reducing bugs. If you get infuriated frequently by debugging, then there are things you can do to change that. Of course you may not want to if you've found other things you like.
- brmgb 6y ago
  To be honest with you, I'm quite amused by our exchange because you obviously enjoy programing a lot and so seems to have difficulty even fathoming that someone could just dislike the craft which is the point I am trying to make. I don't doubt you get a lot better with experience. I was working with a lot of fourth and fifth something engineers and learnt a lot from most of them. The fact remains. I don't find programming or debugging infuriating. I find it mostly uninteresting, dull, devoid of joy and dispiriting. My very first paid job as an intern during my engineering degree was working on a static analyzer written in Ocaml. There was very little bug. I didn't enjoy it at all. At the time, I thought it was because of the context and that I had to keep at it. It never became better.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
Nowadays, I work in management consulting on problems I actually find interesting and which thankfully involve more people than machines. That goes both ways though doesn't it. I find dealing with people rather than machines the least interesting part of my work. I do it because it's necessary but I find it exhausting and try and minimise it. Horses for courses.
- brmgb 6y ago
  Most certainly, don't get me wrong. It is not a value judgement on my part. I don't think people who enjoy coding are wrong and I can conceptually see how it can be fascinating. I just wanted to highlight that this is not some universal truth that the more you do it the more in awe you are at it. For some, the experience forever remains a dredge.

by brmgb 6y ago

chubot 6y ago

OK, well it's great you found something you like, and I don't doubt that there are people who can program who don't like it. I would still claim that just like guitar, it may get more fun with practice, and that practice may take years. Even if you're working on some old legacy system, being the person who can make it sing is pretty fun IMO. Actually I find the legacy stuff to be more interesting because it actually runs and does things in the world. BTW I also found that those kind of debugging sessions went down drastically in frequency in a ~14 year career of programming. (We had multi-week, multi-engineer bugs at my first job in games.) The industry changed its practices significantly, and I also changed my personal practices. It only takes a few experiences like that to reflect on what could have gone differently. Sometimes they are out of your control, but often not. --- edit: If this helps make the point more succinctly, I will also say I was mathematically oriented, and had a masters and BS in engineering from a good university. And I worked on a small team shipping major console games ... and despite that, I got drastically better at debugging and testing in the next 10+ years. (Debugging being the most literally scientific part of programming; I was better at math than science.) Actually the experience of working with game programmers taught me how bad I was at debugging. There's also a lot to learn about software architecture for reducing bugs. If you get infuriated frequently by debugging, then there are things you can do to change that. Of course you may not want to if you've found other things you like.

brmgb 6y ago
To be honest with you, I'm quite amused by our exchange because you obviously enjoy programing a lot and so seems to have difficulty even fathoming that someone could just dislike the craft which is the point I am trying to make. I don't doubt you get a lot better with experience. I was working with a lot of fourth and fifth something engineers and learnt a lot from most of them. The fact remains. I don't find programming or debugging infuriating. I find it mostly uninteresting, dull, devoid of joy and dispiriting. My very first paid job as an intern during my engineering degree was working on a static analyzer written in Ocaml. There was very little bug. I didn't enjoy it at all. At the time, I thought it was because of the context and that I had to keep at it. It never became better.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago

Nowadays, I work in management consulting on problems I actually find interesting and which thankfully involve more people than machines. That goes both ways though doesn't it. I find dealing with people rather than machines the least interesting part of my work. I do it because it's necessary but I find it exhausting and try and minimise it. Horses for courses.

brmgb 6y ago
Most certainly, don't get me wrong. It is not a value judgement on my part. I don't think people who enjoy coding are wrong and I can conceptually see how it can be fascinating. I just wanted to highlight that this is not some universal truth that the more you do it the more in awe you are at it. For some, the experience forever remains a dredge.